Chiapas: Judicial harassment of relatives of the director of the Digna Ochoa Center for Human Rights AC

Nataniel Hernández Nuñez (@Front Line Defenders)

In a 4 July press-release, the Digna Ochoa Center for Human Rights, with headquarters in Tonalá in the coastal region of Chiapas, expressed its concern “for the continuing acts of judicial harassment to which the relatives of the director of this organization have been subjected. C.C. Bersain Hernández Zavala and Guadalupe Núñez Salazar came to the home of the relatives to leave a citation from the Ministerial Police (AFI) demanding that they appear before the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) located in the city of Arriaga […] without knowing the reasons for which they have been called before this penal authority.”

The Center locates this new act in the tendency on the part of the Mexican State and in particular the Chiapas state-government to “use the judicial system to persecute, harass, incarcerate human-rights defenders and [in this case] relatives of those who dedicate their work to the defense of human rights.” They demand that the “Mexican government and the Chiapas government put an end to these acts of harassment directed against human-rights defenders and their relatives [as well as] observe the numerous international accords on human rights.”